Kurzinfo

Optimism and Scepticism regarding Progress in Late 19th-Century and Republican China

On behalf of the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities "Fate, Freedom and Prognostication" at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg Prof. Thomas Fröhlich (convenor) invites to the conference on “Optimism and Scepticism regarding Progress in Late 19th-Century and Republican China”. The conference will be held from 29th - 31th October 2013 in Erlangen, Germany.

The aim of this conference is to examine expressions of optimism and scepticism regarding civilizational progress as they appeared within the circles of the Chinese intellectual and political elite.

Following crisis response strategies from the end of the 19th century, conceptions of civilizational progress, in the broad sense, social evolution and modernization quickly gained a great degree of influence in political and intellectual circles in China. Even though ‘Western’ ideas played a central role to varying degrees in the development of such conceptions, the evaluations, assessments and prognoses of ‘progress’ were by no means concurrent in China and Western societies. While optimistic views on civilizational progress tended to lose importance in Europe and North America from the late 19th century and sceptical findings were increasingly emphasized, optimism regarding progress continued to predominate in China in various forms. Fundamentally optimistic positions, in China, referred to the temporal aspects of civilizational advance: it was thus thought to be possible that progress/modernization could occur in an accelerated mode in China. This attitude reflects notions of a present and future China in which a catching up with, overtaking and surpassing of supposedly more advanced Western societies might take place. Moreover, a multifaceted and frequently ethically based diagnosis of China’s current situation appeared which recognized a lack of simultaneity from an explicitly universal historical perspective and was associated with predictive statements. Here, China appeared as a historical entity that was stuck in a historically ‘backwards’ era in comparison to Western societies and therefore, facing considerable time pressure, needed to undertake targeted steps toward an accelerated process of development. Such optimistic assumptions can be found in a broad intellectual and political spectrum that is not adequately understood in terms of the usual classifications like ‘progressive/conservative’. In this context, research on scepticism regarding progress and criticism of optimistic positions from late imperial and Republican China would also be highly instructive.

The focus of the conference allows for a wide-ranging framework for transdisciplinary investigations into aspects of optimism and scepticism regarding civilizational progress.

The Contingency of Culture: Westernization and Cultural Construction in the 1930sRead Abstract here...Leigh Jenco (London School of Economics and Political Science) Respondent: Hsiau A-chin 蕭阿勤 (Academia Sinica)